Pass the ketchup

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@cs.columbia.edu>]

Hrm, my usual mail-site is down, so I had to send this letter out by some
rather... unconventional methods; I hope it gets through.  I also won't have
seen any other responses on this thread.  Sorry...

Nothing like a relaxing weekend to mull over the events of a long week...
or to work up an appetite for your own words.

I was thinking about some of the stuff I said in response to Jordi Mas,
about if and how Klingon has been developed by its usage.  Obviously, I
overstated things.  As I reflect on it, I realize that the conventions of
Klingonists have certainly developed on their own, not necessarily in line
with unambiguous pronouncements from Okrand (this is patently true, given
the arguments among Klingonists about these very points).  So I must admit,
we definitely have developed the language; whether or not those
developments are along the lines envisioned by the language-creator remains
to be seen (but it *can* be determined).

Still, it would not be fair to say that those developments amount to
rebuilding Klingon in English's image---just look at the differences
between Klingon and English, even between more recent methods used in
Klingon and the corresponding ones in English.  Many of the top
Klingon-speakers are multilingual (though it's true they all speak English
fluently as well), and also have linguistic backgrounds, and so are likely
to tell when they're letting English influence things too much.

I suppose much of the problem between me and Jordi Mas is what other people
have noted already: Jordi's obviously opposed to something... but what that
something is isn't really clear.  Is Klingon as spelled out directly in the
dictionary sufficient as it stands to do all the things we want to do with
it?  I guess not (well, maybe it would be, if you rephrased the hell out of
*everything* down to nursery-school level repetitive sentences that avoided
any complexity beyond that which is explicit in the dictionary).  But then,
no language ever *is* sufficient for everything until it's put to the test
(I've heard that some enormous fraction of Shakespeare's English text
amounts to innovation in English).  So are we innovating?  Yes, we are.  Is
that something bad, though?  Maybe the degree of innovation bothers Jordi,
maybe the fact that all the information out there is only in English,
giving an unfair proportion of English-speakers among the innovators.  I
suppose in a sense then we aren't remaining perfectly true to the language
which in theory resides in complete perfection inside Marc Okrand's skull
(I doubt this, though; he often has to figure stuff out as it comes too),
but then again, at least for now he's there to tell us so.

~mark